Travis Stevens, a sixth degree black belt in judo and first degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, believes the future of judo in America is bleak unless major changes are made. The Olympic silver medalist and three-time Pan Am champion painted a concerning picture of the state of the sport during his recent appearance on the BJJ Fanatics podcast.
According to Stevens, the biggest issue facing US judo is the lack of career opportunities for young athletes, especially when compared to the booming Brazilian jiu-jitsu scene. “There’s no future, there’s no outcome for people,” he lamented. “They’re struggling to stick around” in the sport.
The crux of the problem, Stevens explained, is that judo in America is overly focused on producing Olympic medalists, rather than building a sustainable ecosystem that can retain and develop athletes long-term. “If I told you like ‘hey you have to become a billionaire, a billionaire, otherwise don’t bother going to work,’ we would live in a community of poverty, because you just can’t operate with that mentality,” he said.
In contrast, the jiu-jitsu community has done a much better job of creating entrepreneurial opportunities for practitioners. “There are a lot of people out there who are working… blue collar or white collar jobs that love jiu-jitsu,” Stevens noted. “They love the benefits they derive a lot from like the martial arts principles of the sport when it comes to like immunity, self-preservation, protection, honesty – there’s some type of moral compass in the sport that gets pushed down to people.”
This moral compass, combined with jiu-jitsu’s business model of community-focused schools, has allowed the sport to flourish at the grassroots level. In contrast, the overly rigid and competitive mindset of judo has hindered its growth.
“Judo tends to focus more on the competition side and less on the community side, which is where we really struggle,” Stevens said. “If every jiu-jitsu school in the country treated everybody who walked through the door like ‘dude, you got to get ready to go to the Olympic games,’ that goal is so hard to obtain that you would lose everybody in the sport. Which is where we’re at.”
To turn the tide, Stevens believes the judo community needs to adopt a more inclusive and entrepreneurial approach, similar to what has fueled jiu-jitsu’s rise. Otherwise, the future of the sport in the US appears bleak. “We are into our dark days as a country,” he warned.
